


with these things there's no telling

by starfishofelves



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-11
Updated: 2008-01-11
Packaged: 2017-12-15 13:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starfishofelves/pseuds/starfishofelves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Fact: island life isn't real life, and that isn't only significant when it comes to magazines.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	with these things there's no telling

The rescue boat stops being a _when_ and becomes an _if,_ but they still talk about it, about what it's going to be like back in the real world: if everyone's going to be famous, if someone's going to make a movie about it, if the two of them are going to stay together.

_Cosmopolitan_ wouldn't approve; it's only been a month and it's only been sex and a girl should know better than to talk about a relationship like it's serious, but then again _Cosmopolitan_ doesn't have anything to say about how to keep your hair looking healthy when you spend most of the day on the beach and your shampoo selection depends on what you can find in the wreckage, so she can't really trust it here.

(Fact: island life isn't real life, and that isn't only significant when it comes to magazines.)

"If you'd known me in the real world, you wouldn't have liked me."

"Fair enough." He smiles in that way he does when he isn't taking her seriously. "You wouldn't have liked me either, I think."

"Right. So this isn't going to work. As soon as we get off this island, we're probably never going to see each other again."

He doesn't correct her. Doesn't say anything. Just looks at her in that way he does when he _is_ taking her seriously, maybe too seriously, and she almost winces. She talks to fill up the silence, to make him stop looking at her like that (which is ridiculous because this is _Shannon_ , selfish, bitchy, etc. and since when does she care about people's feelings?). "Sorry. I'm being stupid. It's okay."

Sayid doesn't know Shannon well enough yet to tell when she's lying.

\--

She sees him in the firelight, fingering what's left of an old photograph (and she almost laughs at the way everyone is always gazing into the distance, clutching their mementos; they're stuck here, they might as well romanticize it). She sits down next to him before he can notice her and slip the picture back into a pocket, hiding it away with the rest of his secrets. "Who is she?"

"A girl - a woman - I was on the plane to find her. Her name was Nadia."

Shannon looks closer. She's pretty enough but that isn't what worries her. Nadia looks like the kind of girl who would be one of the people in the hero circle, if she were here. The kind of girl who wouldn't search the wreckage for nail polish and could build her own shelter. "I'm guessing you two were a thing."

The thing about Shannon is, she talks cold and sharp, with understatements and exaggerations and careful inflections to pretend apathy. Sayid does that too, sometimes, in a distant soldierway that she figures comes along with killing people, but when he talks to Shannon it's soft and intense and sometimes she wonders if it's fair to make the syllables bear the weight of all that meaning, if it's fair to make _her_ bear the way of all that meaning. "I loved her." The _d_ was soft; it could have been present tense. She doesn't ask him to repeat it.

Instead, she shrugs. "New beginning, right?"

He answers yes and she doesn't really believe him, but he entwines his fingers with hers and it's enough for right now.

\--

Sometimes, usually when she's sitting with her back to his chest, drawing patterns in the sand with her finger (she wipes them away afterwards, which probably says something about her but she isn't in the mood for introspection and/or pop psychology), she lets herself daydream. What it could be like. What people would say. It doesn't mean anything; it's middle school all over again: flipping though Sabrina's magazines to pick out a dress, a cake, scribbling Mrs. Shannon Insert-Crush's-Last-Name-Here on her folder. It was unrealistic then; it's unrealistic now.

Still.

She wonders what her friends back home (if she still has any friends back home) would say if they saw her with him. _Same old Shannon_ , probably. _Shannon and her older men, Shannon and guys who can take care of her._ She holds this up as evidence that nothing's really different, ignores the fact that in her daydreams, she snaps, "It isn't like that!" and he pulls her closer, holds her tighter, and it's close enough and tight enough that people believe her.

\--

They go after Ethan and she tries to focus on her French, sings "La Mer" under her breath and jumps at every gunshot.

They come back and he's hurt and she plays Florence Nightingale and thinks it's nice to be the one taking care of someone else for once.

\--

She wonders what his friends back home (if he still has any friends back home) would say if they saw him with her. In her mind, she pictures them tall and strong, with a persistent scent of cigarettes and smiles that don't reach their eyes. They would laugh into their beer as soon as she left the room, like all of her boyfriends' buddies before them, saying _where did you find her?_ and _I bet she's a great lay, but is it really worth the effort?_

She's pretty sure he would defend her, which makes it better even if it doesn't make it okay.

\--

Boone is dead and it's almost a relief. It's hard to start over when there's still someone who remembers the person you used to be, someone who brings it up whenever they can. Useless, dependent, manipulative. Just to remind her. Yeah, you're still that person. Same old Shannon. Nothing's changed.

(She realizes, finally. It wasn't the way she'd flirted with Sayid, it was the way she'd changed for him in the way that she refused to change for Boone. And so Boone had kept the old Shannon around, because she was his in the way that the new Shannon was not.)

\--

For an entire afternoon, she searches for a camera, caught up believing that he needs a picture of her. A tangible reminder that, for a while, she existed; another story to tell, _I love(d) her._


End file.
